


ever shifting, slowly changing

by toutcequonveut



Series: The Protean Gene [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Genderfluid, Genderfluid Teddy Lupin, Metamorphmagus, Veela
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-17 01:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13648794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toutcequonveut/pseuds/toutcequonveut
Summary: Teddy learns about fluidity from somebody who knew his mother in ways he didn't anticipate.





	ever shifting, slowly changing

Ever shifting, slowly changing. Most obviously the hair, it shifted like the little offshoots of a river that jump and sparkle, but also the facial features. Few people ever saw and noticed, but his grandmother had mentioned once that over a few weeks, she would notice that Tonks had a squarer jaw, and more pronounced forehead, with clothing that would lie flat and cling to the shoulders rather than the hips. “She was so full of mischief,” Gran would say, her eyes becoming wet as she fumbled for her handkerchief. “You’re so much like her.”

Teddy wasn’t sure what to think about that. On the one hand, everyone told him that his mum would use Metamorphmagus abilities for amusement, changing from human nose to pig snouts and the like. On the other hand, he knew that his mum would shift between being a man and a woman for a very different reason.

When Teddy was young, around eight years old, on a day they were visiting his Uncle Charlie and Aunt Fleur. They weren’t his blood relatives, whatever that meant, but they had been his Uncle Charlie and Aunt Fleur and Cousin Victoire as long as he could remember. Teddy had been sat on some rocks outside on the shore not far from the cottage while the adults visited inside, talking about boring adult things. Victoire wasn’t even there for him to play with; having been shipped off a few days earlier to spend time with her French grandparents.

Teddy was cycling through hair colors, trying to make it stop at certain shades rather than wheel through an entire gradient out of his control. Harry had told him that he couldn’t go to the Muggle park until he could control it.

Aunt Fleur had come out seeking respite while Uncle Bill and Teddy’s Gran started talking about politics. “I love Bill, but I’ll never understand why he’s so certain he wants to stay here,” she had remarked, watching Teddy’s hair go through shades of yellow. “This country thinks just because this is the way it has always been, it must always be so.”

Her gaze slid down then and locked eyes with him. “But you are not like that, are you? No child of Tonks could be so, so—“ she visibly searched for a word to capture such an antithesis of his mother, “-- _stagnant_.”

“What does stagnant mean?” he had asked, his hair going blue and green as his concentration slipped and he focused more on what his aunt was saying.

“It means still,” Aunt Fleur replied. “Solid. Unchanging, and becoming worse because of it.” Her eyes roamed again, this time fixing on the sea behind him. “Maybe I am being too judgmental. Probably I am. But your parent and I understood each other, the need to change, the injustice of being expected to stay as you are so that others can be comfortable. And meanwhile, you are rotting inside, struggling to keep from bursting with the pressure of holding yourself inside-- _putain_!!” Aunt Fleur shot to her feet, hands balled into fists as she yelled into the crashing waves. Her voice had gotten increasingly agitated as she continued, and her face had begun to grow sharper. Behind her waving white-gold hair, he could see the shoulders of her shirt lifting and remembered that his Gran had told him Aunt Fleur was part Veela, a magical race of bird-like people who grew wings when they were emotional.

Teddy sat frozen on his rock as his aunt took deep breaths, still staring at the sea. Her hair began to settle, and her shirt slowly came to rest on her shoulders again. Her eyes remained sharp when she looked back at him though. “I am sorry, Teddy,” she said quietly. “I did not mean to frighten you.”

“It’s okay,” Teddy replied. “Are you…the same as Mum?” He wasn’t quite sure what he was asking, but it was clear that Aunt Fleur had been close to his mother, so maybe she could tell him more about her than his Gran knew.

Aunt Fleur considered him before she answered, “Yes. Your parent and I were two sides of the same coin. Tonks…would have raised you very differently.” 

“What do you mean?” Teddy cocked his head to the side. “And why do you keep calling her my ‘parent’?”

Aunt Fleur looked at him then, really _looked_ at him. “Teddy,” she paused, searching again for words, “Teddy, have you ever felt...as if you were not a boy?”

He thought about it. Memories began to swim up at him, recollections of times when he had felt so wrong in his clothes and yet unsure of the reason why, when the teacher at school had called for boys to stand up and he had stood but not known why he felt sick in his stomach. It wasn’t always like that, though. Teddy told Aunt Fleur so. 

She squatted to his eye level then. Teddy would have laughed at the idea of his graceful, elegant aunt squatting like his Gran berated him for doing, except she looked so very serious. “Listen to me, Teddy,” she began. “What I am about to tell you is something that very few people knew about your parent. The feeling you spoke of, that feeling of not quite being a boy sometimes, is something that Tonks felt as well. I say parent because I do not know what they would have wanted you to call them.”

“Them?” repeated Teddy.

“Yes,” replied Aunt Fleur. “For individuals who feel outside of ‘boys’ or ‘girls’, or when we are uncertain of a person’s preferred pronouns, we refer to them as ‘they’ or ‘them’. It is not a concept that has caught on very well _en France_ ,” she said wistfully.

“Okay,” Teddy agreed. “So my mum wasn’t a girl or a boy? Wait, were they my _mum_ then?”

Aunt Fleur’s gaze turned regretful. “I do not know. We can never know how Tonks would have raised you and what words they would have taught you to address them. It is out of respect for their fluidity that I continue to say ‘parent’, but Tonks could easily have decided to be your mum no matter what gender they felt.”

“And you?” Teddy prompted, after a moment of silence. “How were you the same as Mum?”

Aunt Fleur laughed lightly as she rose to her feet. “Naturally, I am fluid as well!” She raised her arms and it was then that Teddy saw her shirt lift again, wings emerging from her behind her shoulders and growing until they crested in a victorious pose, encircling her upper body for one glorious moment before she relaxed her arms and the wings folded and faded from view. 

When she sat down on a rock again, she began to speak again. “Metamorphmagus abilities are not innately tied to a single other form as Veela heritage is, so Tonks did not feel the pull of the Veela within as I do. But your parent and I were also fluid in the same sense. I do not think your grandmother has raised you with this in mind…?” Teddy shook his head no. “And so I feel responsible to teach you about the existence of fluidity, as one of the few in our family who truly understood Tonks.”

Just then, Teddy heard his Gran call for him from the cottage above. Aunt Fleur heard as well and rose, so Teddy stood up too. She smiled down at him. “Teddy, if ever there is a time when you feel trapped or stagnant, know that you can come to me. I will teach you how to embrace your fluidity.”

**Author's Note:**

> Putain = "whore", but used as an exclaimed cuss word similar to "damn/shit"
> 
> As far as I know, the only options for nonbinary people who speak French are to choose whether they want to use masculine or feminine pronouns. It doesn't seem that the movement for a gender-neutral pronoun has really caught on amongst the wider French lgbtq+ community? Please correct me if I am wrong.
> 
> Tbh I really hate reading Fleur with her accent written in (ze instead of the, anyone?). It just annoys me, so I'm going to say she's been in Britain long enough that her accent has mellowed out and isn't quite as noticeable. What I DID do is try to preserve French speaking patterns in her dialogue. I literally made sure I could see how the line would be written in French. Obviously it's not exact because again, she's been speaking English long enough that that's not really noticeable, but I wanted to preserve her origins.


End file.
